Conventional filling plants are used in part for filling under aseptic or hygienic conditions. In particular, in plants of this type it is necessary in part to decontaminate or to sterilize the packaging member to be filled, such as for example a plastics-material container, before the filling. The sterilization processes known in this case are for example the dry decontamination of packaging members with gaseous hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) without condensation, or also the wet decontamination of packaging members with a mixture of steam and oxidation agent such as for example peracetic acid or other oxidation agents such as for example gaseous hydrogen peroxide during condensation.
An apparatus and a method of producing plastics-material containers are described in DE 10 2006 053 193 A1. In this case at least part of the container wall is sterilized with a sterilization medium in a treatment station, in which case this sterilization medium can be a liquid and/or gaseous sterilization medium.
DE 10 2005 012 507 A1 describes a method and an apparatus for the sterile filling of liquids. In this case the containers are sterilized with H2O2, and the temperature of the containers can be set in such a way as to prevent the condensation of H2O2 on the surface of the containers.
A method and an apparatus for the sterilization of packaging means are known from EP 1 144 016 B1. In this case a liquid disinfectant and steam are supplied separately at the same time to a mixing nozzle, so that a mixture of vaporized and/or evaporated disinfectant and steam is formed by the mixing nozzle.
The subjects of DE 10 2006 053 193 A1, DE 10 2005 012 507 A1 and EP 1 144 016 B1 are thus made by reference into the subject matter of the present application in their entire scope. Furthermore, it is pointed out that, in addition to the concept of the sterilization device or the sterilization, the concepts of a disinfection device and disinfection are also applied in part.
The packaging means can be for example packaging means in the form of hollow bodies, such as pre-forms, bottles, cartons, cups, closures and the like. Furthermore, the packaging means can also be strips of packaging materials, such as for example cartons, sheets of plastics material, aluminium foils and the like.
Methods such as the roller-bottle method or CR (count reduction) tests are already known from the prior art for testing sterilization processes of this type. In these methods it is usual for the effect of the sterilization means, for example hydrogen peroxide, to be tested in a sterilization chamber. These methods, however, are relatively awkward in terms of processing and handling.
Furthermore, in these methods very many manual activities which can only be performed by a user are necessary. Furthermore, methods of this type permit a quantitative and possibly also a qualitative method, but usually it is possible with an increased outlay to test the exact, critical points on the packaging means, such as for example a base region of a plastics-material container or corrugated or grooved regions. Furthermore, in particular, microbiological tests are sensitive to external influences and, in addition, these tests require a considerable amount of time.
It may be desirable to simplify the testing of a sterilization process for packaging members, such as, for example, containers and/or machines, for example, machines for the treatment of containers.